


And then what?

by tanukiham



Series: The Other Hawke [5]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-03-14 06:01:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13583784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanukiham/pseuds/tanukiham
Summary: After the ball, Sebastian has some idea of what Isabela might want from him, and what he wants from her.But they are, of course, the people they have always been, and there is only a slim chance of finding safe harbour together.(A slim chance is better than none.)





	1. Chapter 1

When the ball is done, Sebastian rushes to his room, washes up very quickly, checks himself in the mirror, and frowns. This doublet is too much for what he intends. He changes out of it into something simpler but still too fine for a priest. It suits him well enough, he decides, and certainly it will serve its purpose.

There is a bottle of wine breathing for him; he takes it with him.

There are guards on his door, of course. "You are dismissed," he tells them, holding up a hand when they exchange concerned looks. "I am in my own palace, safe and sound; I do not need you tonight."

They bow and leave him, and he does not delude himself that they will not go straight to their lieutenant to report him. It is inevitable. But, he has maybe a quarter of a glass before they come looking for him again, and he means to take advantage of it.

The guest quarters are a floor below his own, and he takes the stairs as swift as he can without risking his neck. Then, a corridor and a turn, and two doors down, and he finds himself breathless and nervous standing here, now, ready to knock.

But. He has waited for this. If she rejects him now … then that is a thing he will suffer and endure. He has endured far worse, after all.

He lifts a hand and knocks. When there is no answer he knocks again, louder, and when there is *again* no answer, his heart sinks. 

Yet. This is his palace, and he has every right to go in, all the same. Perhaps she has not heard him.

So he opens the door. "Isabela?" 

No answer. He goes in, heart hammering in his chest, but finds no-one. Nothing. Just a well-furnished room with a fire burning in the grate and no sign of her.

No, there is. That gown has been flung over the back of a chair, a glass of wine abandoned on the table by the bed, and the casements are open, curtains pulled back to show a fine view of Starkhaven below, the docks bright around the blackness of the Minanter flowing down to the sea.

She's gone. He feels it like a stone in his chest, the calcification of something he had held close and dear, something he had wished for so many times he feels foolish, now, for treasuring it so deeply.

There is no note. He would have thought she'd leave him _something_ \-- that is, after all, how this has always been between them. But there is nothing, not a single thing to tell him to follow her or wait for her or even that she meant more than to simply explode into his life after so long and then leave, just as easily.

Heavy hearted, he makes himself turn, makes himself pull the door closed behind him, and trudges back down the corridor, up the stairs, to his own rooms.

But when he opens the door he catches movement in the periphery of his vision, curtains blowing in the wind, and realises that his own casements _are open_.

He closes the door and goes in. The door of his bedchamber is ajar, and inside a candle is lit, and on his bed--

She glances up from the in book her lap, and her smile is heavenly.

"Hullo, sweet thing," she purrs. She arches an eyebrow at him, glancing down at the bottle in his hand. "Is that the good stuff? You'd best bring a cup."

She isn't quite naked, but she's wearing only a band about her breasts, and a scrap of very familiar black fabric between her thighs, and her boots. Her hair is loose about her shoulders, gold shining at her throat and her ears, her wrists and fingers, a ruby glinting in the hollow of her navel.

He stares at her in the flickering candlelight, shocked into silence. Then-- "Just the one? I thought we might share it."

"Then bring two, darling," she says, setting the book aside and making herself comfortable on his pillows.

He swallows his questions for as long as it takes to fetch a pair of cups and go in, closing the door behind him. She makes grabby hands, so he pours her a cup and hands it to her, filling his own and sitting gingerly on the edge of the bed, still not entirely sure he isn't dreaming.

She tastes her wine, and her smile is pleased. "Oooh, the _really_ good stuff! Mmmm, very nice, sweet thing, very nice indeed."

He cannot hold his tongue any longer. "Did you climb up the wall of my palace in your smalls?"

Her grin is wicked and so familiar it makes his chest ache. "That dress was too nice for climbing. I'm sure you could buy me another if I ruined it, but I don't see the point in wasting a nice thing when I could have _two_ nice things."

"Are you asking me to buy you a gown?"

"No, I'm _demanding_ it. Are you going to say me nay?"

Ach, how lovely she is. "Never again."

She sits up then, her eyes delighted, and delightful. "Oh! Darling, do you mean that?"

She reaches for his hand in the same moment that he reaches for hers, and when their fingers batter clumsily against one another she _laughs_ , twisting her wrist to tangle her hand with his and draw him in.

"Then you are _definitely_ wearing too much."

She says, her eyes dancing, and he concedes that she is correct. He pulls himself away from her for as much time as it takes to set down his cup and kick off his boots and tug his shirt from his belt and draw it over his head, tossing it to the floor.

How pleased she is. How she reaches for him then, to draw him down. He goes to her, finds a warm place between her thighs, bows his head to catch her mouth and kiss it, giving himself up to it as he has always wanted.

It is as lovely as he has dreamed, no reticence between them now, just the urgency of two bodies that want of one another, and he goes down to her, settles his weight against the sweetness of her form, his hands going free over her skin.

She draws him in, this inexorable force she has (always, _always_ ) been able to bring to bear on him, and he kisses her mouth, presses those kisses down her jaw, pushing the heavy gold aside to kiss again into the space where her throat becomes her shoulder. With every kiss he hopes she understands how he loves her. It is not a thing he can say, because this is _Isabela_ , who believes herself worthy of love but no man nor woman in Thedas worthy of loving her.

He will love her nevertheless, and perhaps she will allow it, just for a little while.

"Mmm, darling," she purrs, and then she has flipped him onto his back, sitting up and raising a hand to her throat. "Well," she says, removing her gold piece by piece and dropping it amongst the covers. "This is an unexpected surprise."

"You must have expected something," he says, running his hands up the strength of her thighs to tuck his thumbs under the band of her smalls and tug. It makes her laugh, delighted, and then she has freed the bounty of her breasts, leaning down to smother him with the sweet scent of them.

"I keep expecting you to change your mind."

"Not tonight," he promises with his mouth pressed to her skin. And, if there should be a tomorrow night, not then either. This is something he wants, something Sebastian the Priest could never have. And nothing Sebastian the Rake could have, either, because for him this would have been a conquest whereas now? Surely _he_ is the conquest, and she the conqueror.

He takes her smalls. Maybe this time he'll keep them.

He lets her have his trousers in exchange.

She's sweet, and salty as the sea, the scent of her hair suspiciously clean, her skin soft with some fine-scented lotion. He imagines her in her boudoir -- no, in her cabin, bathing herself, brushing her hair glossy and smooth, and it strikes him. She has done this if not _for_ him then at the very least with him in mind. She must have planned for this. Hoped for it. He has to pause to catch his breath, shuddering with the revelation that he, perhaps, means something to her beyond the thickness of his cock and the triumph of corrupting a man of the cloth.

"I'm not a priest anymore," he tells her, naked unto her as she is unto him. 

She wrinkles her nose, but she's smiling. "I can _tell_. You don't look even a bit ashamed of yourself."

"Is there something I should be ashamed about?"

"Oh, _no_." She curls her fingers around him, grinning gleefully. "Nothing to be ashamed of _here_."

Except, perhaps, for the intensity of emotion she brings to him.

It comes back to him, how to touch a woman, how to please her and make her writhe and gasp, but it's different now. It means too much, feels too solemn a thing to be spent easily (and how many times has he spent easily, uncaring of where he was or over whom he spent). _She_ is different, unlike any woman he has ever known. So it should be. So it is.

She tells him where she wants him and he goes willingly, hungrily, until his face and hands are soaked with her and he is wreathed in her scent, and she beckons him, breathlessly, up between her thighs. She's wild and demanding, and unashamed, and neither can he be ashamed of this, nor even when he spills too soon, his flesh weak from disuse.

"Mmmm, I'll give you a moment," she says, gripping him with her thighs and pressing his fingers to her cunt. "Just there, darling, work _there_ to keep me warm."

So he does, and when her allotted 'moment' is done she rolls onto her knees, smirking at him over her shoulder.

"Well?" She waggles her bottom at him and arches down like a cat, until he can see her pink and glistening in the shroud of hair at her core. "It's impolite to keep a lady waiting."

_Ach, Isabela._

Later, when he has apparently managed to sate her--"Temporarily," she tells him with her tongue pink on her lip, "don't fall asleep,"-- she takes off her boots and curls up in his arms, warm and quiet, and permits him to bury his face in her hair.

He should feel empty, he thinks. He should feel, well, spent, and _well_ spent, and yet he is too full of something else to want to sleep now. He doesn't know how long he has her. It could be until dawn. It could be less. He has no illusions about what is going to happen when the tide changes. Except--

Starkhaven is land-locked. And she is queen of the sea.

She leans on his shoulder to look up at him. "Oh, you're thinking. How do you have any brains left for that? I'm put out, darling, I really am."

"I was wondering how you got to Starkhaven."

"By boat, of course. I wasn't going to _walk_."

"You sailed up the Minanter?"

She shrugs. "I caught a barge."

"Where's your ship?"

"That's a long and boring story," she says, by which he gathers she means he isn't going to find out from her.

 _How long will you stay?_ But the answer will slay him, so he cannot ask. Instead he strokes a curl of dark hair behind her ear. "There are many fine lodging houses in Starkhaven. However, you are welcome to enjoy the guest quarters of the palace for as long as you should desire."

She props herself up, looking down at him, her face smooth and solemn. "I think we both know you don't really mean that."

"I should think I know my own mind, in my own palace," he says, and he must say it with too much stubbornness because her mouth curls in amusement.

"Darling! It sounds as if you've been getting your own way for far too long. Maybe I should bend you over my knee and teach you a lesson."

"Oh, aye? The lesson, I suppose, that I should be agreeable to you in all things?"

She wrinkles her nose. "Well, it sounds dull when you say it like that."

"Then I shall endeavour not to be dull," he says, and makes bold enough to kiss her.

Much later, with the coals burned low and the covers pulled up in a welter around them, he kisses her throat, her shoulder, raising her fingertips to his lips. His heart is full. It feels as if there is nothing left but this, and yet…

And yet. This cannot last. He knows it and knows too that he cannot ask, that her refusal will only ruin what is left of this. Better to wake to an abandoned bed with sweet memories of her than spoil this now.

So he tells himself. But he should know by now that she is not something he can predict, nor control.

"You should come with me," she says, rolling him onto his back. She sits up, the covers falling from her, lamp-light gilding the curves of her body. Soft. Hard. She is all of that and more, and yes, she looks like the Andraste of his dreams. Or rather, that Andraste has shaped around her, over the years, and now his heart is in his throat because he would refuse her nothing but to give up this one thing, the thing he does not want and cannot put down.

"You know I cannot."

She pouts, stroking his chest, drawing some secret symbol there with one rough fingertip. "You could. You'd make a fantastic pirate, you know."

"You said the same thing to Carver Hawke, I believe. And Fenris. And Merrill."

"Well, it's true. The lot of you would make me a lovely pirate crew, and Varric too. Imagine it! We could go anywhere, do anything. They call me the Queen of the Eastern Seas, you know," and she winks, but it's a show, hiding something deeper she doesn't want to admit.

He knows her too well to be fooled, and loves her too well to let on. "It would be an honour."

"But you won't."

"I can't. No more than you could abandon the sea and stay here, with me."

She tosses her head, wilful as the wind. "Oh, I don't know about that. I might _like_ to retire to a palace, live out my days with both of my legs and no hook hands, and gallons and _gallons_ of wine."

He pushes himself up, catching her shoulder, because if she means it-- "Will you stay with me, Isabela? Could you trade the crown of a pirate queen for that of the Princess of Starkhaven?"

For a moment he sees her waver, but he does not need the gentle shake of her head to know that this, as with all the things he truly wants, cannot come to pass.

"I was joking, darling," she says, so kindly that when it cuts him the cut is gentle. "I'm not retiring any time soon, after all."

The choke of his throat is a bitter thing to swallow, but he does it, because he must, because they both know how this will end. "Well then. I will save that crown for when you do."

If anything this makes it worse. Isabela frowns, leaning away from him. "Oh, no. I won't let you do _that_. You can't save yourself against the future, darling. That would make me very, very sad."

Impossible woman. "What would you have me do?"

"If you won't come with me?" She rolls a shoulder, eyeing him with speculation. "Then take a lover. Take a dozen. _Live_ for once. Can you do that for me?"

He tells her yes, because he must, but he knows it isn't true at all.

* * *

In the morning, Sebastian wakes alone.

Expected as it is, he feels it keenly. A blow. Had he really thought she might stay?

A girl comes in with his breakfast. She regards his shirtlessness with some interest, saying nothing except with her eyes, and when she's gone Yolanda bustles in to lay out his clothes for the day.

"I've drawn your bath, Your Highness," she says, examining him narrowly, before making a show of picking up the clothes discarded on the floor. 

"Thank-you," he tells her, dolefully poking at the cream-poached salmon on his plate. He cannot muster the stomach for it. Isabela, he thinks, would have devoured it with gusto. They could have breakfasted together, at least, he could have poured her tea, and kissed her in the windowsill as the wind tossed her hair about her shoulders.

"Are you finished with this?" Yolanda asks him, holding up a book taken from his bed stand. He nods, but then--

"Wait. Please," and he holds out his hand because that was the book Isabela had been reading on his bed, last night. He's curious, as far as he can be curious this morning, wants to touch the thing she touched and think of her, waiting for him.

When he cracks the cover, though, he can't quite understand what he's seeing.

_The Priest and the Pirate, a Debauchery in Three Acts, by Ana n'Maus_

It's a hideous pun, and so _like_ her, and when he flips forward he sees words he _knows_ , ones he's read before, left like gifts for him in the barren comfort of a cell in the Kirkwall Chantry, now gone forever.

"Are you ready for your bath, Your Highness?"

Sebastian looks up, and can't remember what he's supposed to do.

"Yes," he says, and then he's about to get up when he remembers how scandalously naked and sticky he is. "Ah, you may leave me. I can bathe myself," he insists when Yolanda looks fit to argue. She does leave him, in the end, though she looks sour about it, and then Sebastian takes the book with him into the bath, reading it from the beginning.

It is predictable, ribald, shameless, and peppered with truly rotten wordplay, but he cannot stop reading it, not later when Yolanda comes in to fuss over his dress, nor after when he is supposed to be paying attention to Marilyn and her endless paperwork. She clears her throat at him, but does not go so far as to roll her eyes. He puts the book aside, vowing to behave himself, only to find his hand twitching toward it as she speaks.

Eventually she sets down her papers, frowning severely. "If you are preoccupied, Your Highness, perhaps we should adjourn until after luncheon."

Prim as a queen, as always, and Sebastian is ashamed of himself. Still. "Please, I would be grateful."

It isn't a long book, nor heavily overwritten. It makes its points quite clearly -- the pirate has plans for the priest, and lays siege to his objections, until he surrenders to her. Then there is some adventure, quickly glossed over (save for the parts in which the Captain's wardrobe and valour are lovingly depicted). The lovers are parted, reunited, and parted again only to reunite once more in a passionately described sequence of lovemaking that is, in places, physically improbable.

The book has been printed, a costly exercise that has Varric's influence all over it, but the print ends suddenly, several pages before the end. On the first blank page, however, someone has scrawled (in wine? Is that what this is?) a final epigraph.

_And then what?_

He stares at it, unable to grasp what it means. And then … what? 

It isn't a goodbye. If anything, it's an invitation.

When Marilyn returns to find him brooding amongst the remains of his luncheon, she sighs. "Your Highness," she begins, but he lifts a finger to stop her, the thrill of possible futures burning in his chest.

"I want to talk about the succession."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What I had planned for these two doesn't match up with DA:Inquisiton very well, but I suppose it doesn't matter. We've been off the map since forever, and I hope you enjoy the adventure with me all the same.


	2. A True Daughter of Starkhaven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full disclosure, I wrote this in one sitting last night, and I'm not entirely sure it makes all the sense I wanted it to. It really ought to be its own story, which is why it gets its own title, such as it is.

When they call for her, Margaret goes quietly enough, but inside she simmers with resentment. She did nothing wrong. Rory was asking for it. _Bloody_ Rory, who is no better than herself but puts on such airs for someone only two years her elder. As if he's not _just_ as unwanted as she, as much an 'orphan' of the Chantry. So what if his father sends him gifts? He'll never be acknowledged. If he could he wouldn't be here in the first place.

Sister Adeline shows her into a parlour, one of the ones set aside for the use of the full sisters, and for a moment Margaret's anger shifts into worry. This can't be about the prank. She has no idea what it _is_ about, but if they knew what she had done with Rory's smalls then she would be in the Revered Mother's study facing down her endless disapproval, not told to wait in a parlour and left alone.

Still, the worry lasts only a moment before it's overcome by curiosity. The room is pleasantly furnished, with chairs and a low table before a fireplace, a shelf against the wall bearing a sparse collection of books. She goes to it at once, running her fingers over the spines. They are mostly Chantry rhetoric, of course; she recognises several of the titles and ignores them. 

But, wedged down on the lowest shelf between a history and a thin reproduction of the Canticle of Trials she finds a travelogue written by a lay sister who spent her life ministering to the undeserving in Rivain. It's fascinating reading, unlike the dull memoirs of the Divines Margaret has read over and over. The author is clever and droll, and lingers over descriptions of her charges that verge on the blasphemous. In particular, Margaret is intrigued by her depictions of an Antivan fellow with a glorious moustache who crops up out of nowhere time and again, to flirt and make innuendo. He sounds dashing. Margaret wonders if he is a Crow. Wouldn't that be something? A real life Antivan Crow, flirting with a lay sister of the Chantry, who seems in no way to mind it, and Margaret has brought the book to the fire to read it curled up in a chair when the door opens.

Immediately she tucks the book into her apron, standing up, only too aware that she was not supposed to make herself comfortable here, not when she's still half-expecting a scolding.

The man in the doorway looks familiar, but not so much that she can place him at once. He's tall, with dark reddish hair, and very fine features. And he's dressed handsomely enough that she knows she ought to curtsey, so she does, curiosity climbing her throat. What is a _nobleman_ doing here in the Chantry compound?

Sister Adeline hovers in the doorway, looking over the man's shoulder at Margaret with such concern on her face that Margaret begins to worry again.

"Thank-you, sister," the man says, coming into the room. There's an elf with him, dressed in the uniform of the Royal Guard, which makes no sense at all. Another man, out of place. "You may leave us."

"Oh, your Highness," says Sister Adeline, "I should stay, should I not?" and Margaret stiffens because _that's_ why he looks familiar. He's the Prince of Starkhaven, Sebastian the Second, and suddenly Margaret's curtsey feels too small, not enough for someone so grand as he.

What does he want?

It's not clear, but he dismisses Sister Adeline with a request for a tea tray, and the sister goes, though she looks so reluctant about it that Margaret's heart begins to beat faster.

The Prince looks her over with a wee frown. "Hello, Margaret," he says. "Do you know who I am?"

"Prince Sebastian of Starkhaven," she says automatically, and then she curtsies again, this time as deep as she can.

"And you are Margaret MacAllison, are you not? Your mother is Lady Allison Finlay?"

It's true, though no-one ever cares about it. "Aye, your Highness."

The Prince puts a hand on the back of a chair, and then he gestures neatly at the one she has only just sprung out of. "Please, sit down."

She does, fisting her hands together in her lap and dreading whatever is to come. They wouldn't chop off her head for a _prank_ , would they? That's just something the sisters say to keep them in line, isn't it? But what else could he be here _for_?

"How old are you, Margaret?"

"Twelve. Thirteen, come Wintersend."

He nods, as if that is to be expected. "Your mother … she is well?"

"Probably," Margaret tells him, because she doesn't know. It's not as though the Lady Allison sends _her_ gifts, nor letters, not like _Rory_.

This only makes him frown the more. "And your father?"

What a question! Margaret composes herself carefully, holding up her chin because she has _nothing_ to be ashamed of, Grand Cleric Merida herself said as much. "Only the Maker knows. Your Highness."

"Your mother has never told you who your father is, then?"

She shakes her head, her cheeks heating. "My mother never tells me anything."

The tray comes then, carried in by Sister Adeline, who is again dismissed by the Prince and again looks reluctant about it. She goes anyway, and Margaret thinks very ill of her for doing so, leaving her alone with two strangers.

The elf, Margaret notes, does not take tea. He stands by the door, leaned up against the wall, and seems to be ignoring her completely. He's strange, though, white-haired and marked about the chin and throat with silvery lines that gleam in the firelight. She decides to ignore him right back.

The Prince has taken up the teapot and poured two cups. He offers one to Margaret with a smile. As she sweetens her tea, making it as milky as she thinks politeness will allow, he says, "Do you enjoy your studies?"

It's a trick. It must be. She stirs her tea, wondering what would be the right thing to say. "I make good marks, your Highness."

"But do you want to be a Chantry Sister? Or would you choose something else to do with your life?"

Another trick. "There is no service more worthy than service to the Maker," she says, and she's surprised when the elf snorts loudly, his eyes coming up to light on her.

The prince glances at him and he shrugs. "She has her father's diplomacy," he says, his voice a deep, dangerous rumble that seems at odds with what she has always thought she'd known of elves.

But the moment the words penetrate, Margaret stops caring about the danger, or her worries, overcome with a powerful desire to _know_. "Have you met my father, serrah?" 

The elf turns away, ignoring her again, and it makes her so angry. 

"It's unfair of you not to tell me if you do," she snaps. "I deserve to know."

When he looks at her this time his eyes are bright, a clear luminous green that pins her in place. There's nothing cruel in it, though, not that she can see. Still, she resents him for keeping this knowledge to himself, when it has been something she has wanted to know for so long.

The prince clears his throat. "Lady Margaret is, of course, correct." He frowns, folding his hands together with his elbows resting on his knees. "However, if you wish to be a sister in the Chantry then perhaps it is best that you not know. Knowing might change your fate. Would you rather know, and have that door closed? Or will you trust in the Maker to know what is right for you?"

A trick, a trick, he can't mean it. And yet. "No. I dinnae want to be a Chantry sister." There, she's said it. Aloud to the Prince of Starkhaven, and it feels a burden lifted from her shoulders. Whatever happens next is in the hands of the Maker, and she prays silently to His Bride, _Andraste, I beg you, don't let them keep me here any longer._

For whatever reason, the Prince smiles. It's a handsome smile that goes all the way to his eyes, crinkling them in the corners. He's old, but not _so_ old. Maybe kind. She's always heard the Prince of Starkhaven was kind, much kinder than the old prince, old Goran the Greedy.

Now, he fixes her with a level look. "What if _I_ were your father?"

It can't be true. That's the dream of _every_ Chantry orphan, to be in secret a prince or a princess themselves. Anger rises up in her, because he's tricking her again and it's _not fair_. "Lying is a sin."

"Aye, it is. I was a priest of Andraste before I ascended the throne. Did you know that?"

She had. She's heard it told over and over, how the Prince is a pious man, good in the sight of the Maker, and once the lowest of his servants. "Aye," she says.

"And have you ever known a priest of Andraste to lie?"

No. But.

"If you're my father," she says, and it sounds too wonderful to be true, "then why did you not take me when Mother didn't want me?"

His eyes widen, and then crease into something she thinks might be remorse. "I didnae know. Please, forgive me. I could not have known."

"But you would have," she insists, because …. Because she's wanted that so _hard_ , wished her father would come for her, and take her away from the endless recitation and lectures and _chores_ , away from the punishments she's taken for her sins, for wanting things no good orphan should want. "You'd have taken me with you, wouldn't you?"

"I suspect not," he tells her. "I'm sorry. I was not in control of my own life then. But later," he added, sitting up straight, "I would have done everything for you that I could."

It's not enough. She puts down her cup, so angry she wants to smash it on the floor and she _mustn't_. She must not break things or show anger or be _indecorous_ or think bad words or curse the Maker. She _can't_. It's not allowed, and she takes deep breaths to calm herself.

"What about now?" she asks, hating how small her voice is, how her eyes prickle hot to think-- _He's going to leave me here, he's going to_ leave _me, and I'll never get out of this place._

"Now, I can." He holds out a hand, watching her with eyes the same aquamarine as the ones that look back at her from her mirror, solemn and serious. "Will you come with me, Lady Margaret?"

The Maker knows there's only one answer she can give.

* * *

Margaret doesn't know what a father is supposed to be like, but she's imagined it. Stern. Dour. Full of punishments and reprimands. As implacable as the Maker, just as she's always imagined a _real_ mother would wrap her up in love, like Andraste, would smother her with care.

Sebastian's not any of those things. He asks her each night how her studies are progressing, if she has found anything new in the library, if she'd like more gravy with her dinner. She tells him about Brother Genitivi, and the dissonant verses, and _birds_ \-- there are so many of them in the palace grounds and she'd like to keep one if only she could tame it.

Sebastian tells her that it would be cruel to keep a bird against its will, and she understands that. No-one should be trapped in a place they don't want to be. It's _wrong_.

"Theressa tells me you've learned the lineage of the Vael family in its entirety," he says, pouring her a quarter cup of wine and watering it. "That's very good."

"Do you want me to recite it?" she asks, because in the Chantry they were always getting her to recite things.

"Would you like to?"

"No," she tells him, because it's true and he never seems to mind if she says so.

"Then no," he agrees, smiling.

She likes his smile. She'd been worried that he would be cold to her, that maybe he'd disapprove of her and send her back. That worry is not completely dead, yet, but he has never hinted at it, never threatened, not even when she broke the hundred year old vase _completely by accident_. He'd sighed, and said it was unfortunate, but also that the vase had been very ugly, and she hadn't even had to miss supper.

He's not at all what she expected, and neither is the palace. There are so many servants, so many girls older than she who curtsey and call her 'my lady' and slip her treats when Theressa's not watching. She likes baked apples, and Cook keeps some aside for her, filling her pockets every time she can get away from her governess and sneak down to the kitchens. The library is full of books and she's allowed to read _all_ of them, even the books the librarians say are 'too grown up for wee ones'. The gardens are bright with flowers, and the gardeners always stop what they're doing to tell her why a plant is this way or that, or the name of a bird, and how to coax them down from the trees or out of the bushes to eat seeds and fruit pieces from her hand. There are stables and horses and she's not supposed to go alone into their stalls but Cod, the stable boy with the gap-toothed smile, lets her help him brush them down and tease the tangles from their manes.

It feels so far from the Chantry that she doesn't mind going down to the chapel on holy days, doesn't mind kneeling and speaking the responses, doesn't even mind when Sebastian asks her to recite a verse for the palace congregation. She does her best, her mind elsewhere, because she knows the verses well enough by now to say them in her sleep. No-one seems to notice or care, and the Sister who minds the chapel pets her hair and tells her she's a good, pious lass, even when Margaret is quite sure she's not at all.

At night she says her prayers without being asked, and she always says the same thing.

"Thank-you, Maker, for taking me out of the Chantry. I promise I'll be good if you dinnae ever send me back. Andraste shelter my father and mother, and bless the servants and guards and Theressa. Praise to the Maker, amen."

She _is_ grateful, and she means every word, but really? When she says, "Andraste shelter my father," she means it more than the rest, Maker forgive her sins.

* * *

"What are you about, magpie?"

Margaret leaps out of her chair, throwing herself across the parlour to wrap around Isabela's waist and hug her. "Isabela! You're back!"

The Captain chuckles and pets her hair, smoothing it back from her face where it's come out of the boring old braids Theressa insists on every blasted morning. "Hello, darling. Are you enjoying your book?"

"Aye! It's got _Templars_ in it, smiting the wicked! I should like that, smiting things. There's lady templars now, you know. They've got swords as long as your arm!"

Isabela rolls her eyes. " _Swords_. Great big nasty things. _Much_ better to stick to knives."

"Knives are boring," Margaret scoffs. She's got a knife, a belt knife for cutting string and wedging into cracks in the stonework to lever bits out of it when you're bored. And she is _so_ , so bored these days. Who knew the palace could be nearly as boring as the Chantry, once you were used to it?

"Oh?" Isabela rocks back on her heels, her eyes glittering with mischief. "Is that so? I suppose," she goes on, a blade flickering in her hand that wasn't there a moment ago, " _that_ means you don't want to learn a trick."

The blade flashes around Isabela's fingers in a bright silvery roll. Margaret suddenly wants to learn a trick very, _very_ badly. "Oh, please! Isabela!"

Isabela laughs, warm and throaty, and then she teaches Margaret how to draw her knife without being seen, and to twirl it around her thumb. It takes some doing, but when she's got it Isabela tells her she's done well, and shows her how to spin it from outwards to inwards, shifting her grip in one smooth flourish.

When Sebastian finds them he looks pained. "Isa _bela_ ," he sighs, the same way he did the time Isabela taught her to rig a bosun's chair with rope and haul herself up from the foot of the grand stairway to the balcony. "Must you?"

"It's important! Look, she's _gifted_. Go on, magpie," she says, winking at Margaret in encouragement. "Show your da how gifted you are with a blade."

Margaret shows him, and Sebastian groans, scrubbing a hand over his face. 

"Are you angry, Father?" Margaret asks, conscious of his approval and wanting it badly.

He shakes his head. "No, no. Not at all. It is … simply something I had not realised a princess might need to know."

"Of course she needs to know!" Isabela props her hands on her hips, scowling ferociously. "What if someone snuck in here to do her an injury, hmm?"

"Then she could dazzle them with knife tricks until the guard came," Sebastian says, dry in a way he is only ever dry with Isabela. But he seems amused more than angry. "Go on, then. Teach her everything you think she needs."

"Oooh, everything?" Isabela crows with delight, clapping her hands together. "Darling! I absolutely will."

"What have I unleashed?" Sebastian mutters, but Margaret is bored of their flirting, and concentrates on flickering her knife back and forth in her hand, until the motion feels smooth and natural.

In the morning Isabela takes her down to the courtyard where Sebastian keeps his archery targets, and shows her how to draw and stab, how to slice, how to twist the point to do the most damage. She inks marks on one of the practice dummies, the best places to go in between the gaps in armour, and where to stab a man who is unarmoured to take him down.

"You mustn't rely on the knife, magpie," she says, crouching down to look Margaret in the eye. "It's a tool, but it isn't the only one you have."

"What does that mean?"

"You have hands and feet, knees and elbows. And you can crack a man with your skull, if you aim right." She shows Margaret how to turn her hands into weapons, how to aim a kick right where it would do the most good, how to hurt someone who was trying to hurt her, and how to kill them.

It's not the way the Chantry teaches it. They say the best thing to do when assaulted is to pray to the Maker for deliverance, and when Margaret says as much aloud Isabela nods solemnly. 

"Well, that's all very well for _martyrs_ but I'd rather make my own luck, wouldn't you?"

Margaret looks up at her, silhouetted against the sun, and she has to ask. "Are you going to marry my father?"

Isabela winces. "Darling," she says, "nobody wants that."

" _I_ do," Margaret tells her. 

Isabela's not anything like she had ever imagined a mother might be, but she's _better_ than that. She never treats Margaret like she's small or stupid, and she makes Sebastian happy in a way that no-one else can. He looks so _pleased_ when she visits, sauntering around the palace with a smile on his face that is usually hard to wheedle out of him.

"Oh!" Maybe Isabela doesn't know. "I know you're lovers," she whispers, because it's supposed to be a secret, but Margaret is thirteen now, and she _knows_ things. "I know you do … lovemaking things. You should marry him. It would make him happy, I just know it."

Isabela turns her head away to look at the horizon. There's nothing there that Margaret can see, just the hills and plains spreading out below, the long curl of the Minanter running out of sight and down to the sea.

"I don't think so, magpie," she says, and she doesn't sound sad, just resigned. Like this is simply the way things have to be. Margaret has heard that enough to recognise it by now; some things just _are_.

 _It is a thing that is,_ Captain Fenris says sometimes, normally when he's telling her why she can't have a sword or come with him on patrols of the city.

"I wish you would," Margaret tells her, meaning it more than she'd known she could.

"I know, darling." Isabela touches Margaret's cheek, her fingers scarred and rough. "Don't think it's because I don't love you enough."

A thing that is. Margaret wishes anyway.

* * *

Margaret is fifteen when she realises why the Marquis of Alyons keeps sending her gifts.

She storms into Sebastian's study, throwing the door open and ready to yell at him. But when he looks up his eyes are tired and sad and immediately her rage goes out of her. "Father?" she says, her hands tightening on her skirts. "Are you well?"

"Well enough." He stands, and gestures for her to take a seat. "What ails you?"

That's right. She's furious with him. But the anger is hard to rekindle when he looks like this, and it takes an effort for her glare at him, sitting down straight-backed in her chair. "Are you selling me to Jean-Renard du Alyons?"

His eyes widen. " _Selling_?"

"He's courting me, is he not?" There, now she's angry again. "He's _one million_ years old, how could you?"

"I have no intention of _selling_ you to anyone," he says, frowning. Oh, now _he's_ angry. She can tell, the tight lines around his mouth giving him away. He works hard to keep it tamped, however, burning long and low instead of flaring up the way her temper always does. "I had hoped … Connor Guerrin of Redcliffe is a fine young man, and a better match for you than Alyons."

"He's old too," Margaret insists. "Why do I have to marry anyone? Isabela said a woman should choose for herself."

His mouth twists into a greater sadness. Margaret can't help feeling she has hurt him, but she doesn't know how. "Of course. And she is, as always, far wiser than I. But there are advantages to marriage, for a princess."

"You never married," she snaps. He should have married Isabela years ago, but instead he _degrades_ her by keeping her as his _mistress_ and Margaret rages sometimes over the injustice of it.

Though … perhaps it is Isabela who has chosen not to marry him.

The realisation comes over her like a douse of water. Perhaps he would have, perhaps he'd _asked_. And Isabela…

The old fantasy of Isabela as her mother comes apart at the seams, dissolving under scrutiny. All her marvellous adventures, all her _tales_. She's a pirate -- Margaret has guessed as much -- a rogue of the sea, and who would give up such freedom to be cloistered here in the palace? Even if she loves Sebastian as much as Sebastian so clearly loves her.

Sebastian nods, his whole self bent in weariness. "This is so. And thus, I would not demand of you a thing I will not do. However." He fixes her with a look, sharp and demanding, and she feels her spine straighten beneath it. "If you dinnae make an heir for yourself then you are at risk of losing Starkhaven to an enterprising cousin."

Oh. He means Daven Vael, the son of Goran the Greedy, now Brother Daven and vocal in his hatred of her father. She's not stupid, she listens to the things Marilyn and Sebastian argue over when they think she's too busy reading to pay them mind. Marilyn thinks Daven should be dealt with. Sebastian insists that the Chantry is a leash for him. Marilyn has insisted that it was no leash for _Sebastian_ and Sebastian insists right back that he will not murder a boy for the sins of the father.

Margaret thinks it wouldn't be murder, not if it were in the best interests of Starkhaven. It would be assassination. Whether or not it would be _just_ she has not yet decided.

And one day she suspects this problem may become _her_ problem.

But that day is a long way away, and between then and now stands the issue of her _issue_ , another thing she wishes a long way off.

"I won't marry some old Orlesian Marquis just to get an heir. He'd never mind me. I'd be a puppet to him, and I won't _do_ it."

Sebastian smiles, just a wee bit. Not the smile he reserves for Isabela, but one Margaret has come to think of as her own. "An excellent choice. But Connor Guerrin?"

"He belongs in Ferelden with his mud and his dogs," Margaret scoffs. "I'll take a commoner or, or a _Templar_ first."

"Oh, aye?" Sebastian's gaze narrows, and she feels her face heat. "Any Templar in particular? Young Ser Rory, perhaps?"

She holds her chin as high as she can, haughty the way she's learned from the Orlesian girls who come courting her father. "Rory's _awful_ , but he's a son of Starkhaven and worth more than any Fereldan Arl's son."

"I'm sure the Chantry would approve." He pushes himself to his feet and offers her his hand. "But you need not worry about marriage yet. I will send a polite rebuff to Alyons, and perhaps the thought of winning you has not so much as crossed Guerrin's mind. Shall we take a turn about the gardens? I hear there are partridge nesting in the hedgerows."

It is a distraction, but a welcome one. His hand is warm and strong, and she is glad that he listens to her. "Partridge attract _hawks_ ," she tells him. "I've been keeping an eye out."

"Of course you have," he says, and he escorts her down to see.

* * *

"Seventeen makes you a woman," Sebastian says gravely, but Margaret knows he's shamming. He folds his hands behind his back, his brow drawn, but his mouth cannot keep from twitching and she could _strangle_ him, he's being so coy. "Deserving of a womanly gift. No more pretty frocks and ponies for you."

She rolls her eyes at him, propping her hands on her hips. Last year he gave her a fine grey mare, hardly a pony, and the year before that he'd had a gown made for her that scandalised more than one of the Starkhaven dowagers with its bare-shouldered neckline. Isabela's influence, that one, and Margaret was glad of it, but gladder of the set of knives Isabela had left hidden in Margaret's smalls-chest. They'd come with discreet sheaths, and she'd worn one beneath her bodice the whole evening of her birthday ball and no-one had been the wiser.

"You seem feverish," Sebastian says, pretending concern. "Perhaps you are ill. We could cancel the ball."

"There would be a _rebellion_ ," Margaret retorts. " _Father_. I know you have a surprise for me. I'm quite ready to be surprised."

"Very well, if you're certain." He offers her his arm and she takes it with all the dainty grace she is supposed to show now she is, as he keeps reminding her, officially the Crown Princess of Starkhaven. 

He takes her out to the archery range, much to her surprise, and makes her cover her eyes as he leads her down the steps. 

"There. You may look."

There's a suit of armour on a stand, white and gold and made slight for someone slight, someone exactly her height. It's light armour, beautifully worked, and when she turns to thank him he has a bow in his hands, crafted from fine Starkhaven elm.

"You are," he says, offering it to her with both hands, "more than worthy of a warrior's weapon. I know how you feel about knives, but I've seen you shoot. My grandfather would have been proud, and so am I."

It's too much. She does not cry in front of him anymore, had put that childish weakness aside long ago, but now she cannot fight the lump in her throat nor the prickle in her eyes, and it takes her a long string of heartbearts before she can reach out to take it from him.

"Father," she says, and it breaks in half, her voice betraying her when she needs it to be strong, to prove to him that she truly _is_ worthy. She knows what it means to him to give her this, and knows also that she will never, ever disappoint him willingly. "Thank-you."

"Will you try the armour? I know you have breeches on under that skirt," he adds, dry in a way that reminds her heavily of Isabela, who has not visited in so long Margaret has stopped expecting her, though she has never stopped wishing.

The armour fits like a glove, lighter than a ballgown, and she feels _powerful_ in it, invincible and pure of heart. Ridiculous, really, for her heart is the same as anyone's, at its core.

"It suits you well," Sebastian says, and there's something caught in his throat, there must be, but he turns away to fetch a handful of arrows and encourages her to string and test the bow.

The draw is heavy, and she struggles at first, but when she focuses she finds it not so much worse than the practice bows she's trained on. She hits the target with her third shot, the bullseye with her fourth, and the fifth does not split the fourth but lands close enough for her to feel a rush of success all the way to her toes.

Sebastian claps, lifting his fingers to his lips and smiling in a way she has wished for, for so long.

" _Very_ good. But, we should go up. Yolanda will _eviscerate_ me if I make you late to your own ball."

He's right. Still, shedding the armour to put on the unwieldy layers of a ballgown is an imposition, for all she has been looking forward to this ball. She has given up all hope of seeing Isabela today, but settles her knives beneath her gown all the same, and it is like Isabela is there with her, an armour of a different kind.

The ball is grand, grander this year because she is old enough to drink her wine unwatered, though only half-cups at a time under Theressa's ever-seeing eye.

She dances with the men of her father's court, with Guard Captain Fenris, with the Knight Commander (who is very _wry_ but thoroughly polite to her). She dances with her father, and he is handsome in the candlelight, the handsomest man in Starkhaven, but still so sad. She sees him look about for someone who isn't there, and she feels it keenly, this space in their lives that remains empty now and cannot be filled.

Still, she is merry, and enjoys the adoration of the court. She dances with the few common folk privileged to see her grow a whole year older, and dances in particular with an Antivan merchant with a fabulous moustache who teases her onto the dance floor with flamboyant compliments. He makes her laugh. When he presses for her company she demurs, amused by him, and when she is exhausted she takes herself to the gallery for a moment, just to catch her breath.

"My lady?"

The merchant has followed her out. Apparently she has not given him a firm enough 'no' and she turns now to do exactly that, coached over and over again in how to tell a man he is unwanted. One of the many skills of a princess of Starkhaven, though one she has not needed much before now.

But as she turns she realises -- there are no guards. Where are they? Captain Fenris is particular, and there should be two at the far end of the gallery and two more by the near. She is alone. It has been a long time since she has been completely alone and now, with a stranger advancing on her, she feels suddenly aware of the weight of her skirts and the bare vulnerability of her throat.

"One last dance, my lady?" he says, smiling, but she mislikes his smile and steps back. He sighs, a hand moving to his belt. "No? Must it be like this?"

He strikes like a snake, his hand flashing toward her with something silver in his palm.

Margaret moves without thinking, her feet going exactly where she needs them, hand tugging the hidden dagger from her bodice, and twisting it to come up under his arm, where his brigandine leaves a gap.

 _Here,_ Isabela had said, _Dig deep and twist, and wrench it out again to let the blood flow._

It goes in harder and easier than expected. Harder, because she does not _want_ to kill him. Easier, because his flesh gives way like a melon, and then he is staggering back, clutching at his armpit.

The dagger is bloody but her hand does not shake. She levels it at him, and does something she never thought she would ever do in her own palace. She screams.

It is over very quickly after that, the royal guard spilling into the gallery in a tumble of Starkhaven red. They smother the Antivan at once, bearing him to the ground. The Guard Captain covers her with his body, the lyrium in his skin lit to eye-blinding brightness, and he snarls, "Did he touch you?"

"No," she says, surprised at the steady tenor of her voice. "I stabbed him."

Captain Fenris searches her face for a moment and then he shudders, stepping off, the lines of light fading down to a dim glow. "That is well. Forgive me, Princess."

"Margaret!"

Sebastian shoves his way through the guards, so pale Margaret takes a step toward him, her heart quivering. He looks like death, and when he reaches her he clasps her in both hands.

"Are you all right?"

"I _stabbed_ him," she says, but this time she chokes on it, and she has to clutch the knife hard so it doesn't fall. "Father--"

"Thank the Maker!" He clutches her to his chest, holding her head against his shoulder, and this is _wrong_. He doesn't hold her like this, has never held her like _this_. She's done something terribly wrong for him to sound so afraid. Maker, what has she done?

He takes her upstairs, sits her down in his study with a brace of guards at the door, and pours her a cup of brandy. "It's all right," he tells her when she stares at it. He's never given her brandy before. It's a man's drink, a grown up drink, and she has never felt so small. "Maker's _light_ , Margaret. I'm sorry."

"Why?" She blinks at him, unable to comprehend why he looks like this. Heartbroken, almost, and he keeps touching her shoulders, his thumbs tracing her collarbones as he stares and stares.

"I know not how that _man_ got into the palace, but I swear to you when I find who is behind this I will rend them to _pieces_."

He sounds so … angry? No, that isn't it. _Hurt_ , like this has hurt him, like he was the one she stabbed, and _oh Maker_ , she _stabbed_ a man.

"I stabbed him," she says, wondering at it. "He came at me and I just … it was _easy_." And hard, so much harder than she'd expected.

"You _did_. My lass, you stabbed him perfectly." He smiles, or he tries to, but there's so much wrong with his face that it comes out a grimace. "Isabela would be proud."

Oh, no. "I miss her," she says, her breath hitching. "I wish … _Father_ \--" and she can't stop it, the sobs just bubble out of her, dissolving everything she means to say in a wash of tears.

He pulls her in again, holds her against his chest, and does not let go. "It's all right, my love. You did what needed to be done. A true daughter of Starkhaven. My own girl."

She stays there, wrapped up in his arms, for a long time. Eventually she sniffs back the last of her tears and feels silly. Until she remembers what happened and then she's just _angry_.

"Where were the guards?" she demands, wiping her face on the back of her hand. "They were _gone_."

"I mean to ask Fenris the same question," he says, and there, he's angry too, but his anger is like an avalanche, slow to build and sudden in its devastation. "This will not go unpunished."

That isn't right. "The Guard Captain was distraught. I think he's just as angry as you are."

"That is as may be. But," and Sebastian puts the cup back in her hands, encouraging her to sip it. "If anything had happened to you, I--" He shakes his head, his expression dark with all that anger.

"You'd need to find another heir," she says, but it's the wrong thing to say. His head comes up, horror written all over his face.

"I could _never_ replace you."

It would, she thinks, only take him another five years. Or seventeen, if he had to grow a new heir from scratch. But he's distressed enough that she doesn't say it, just pats him awkwardly on the chest.

"I'll do my best not to need replacing."

And maybe that's the _right_ thing to say. His expression softens, anyway, and he says, "Swear it to me."

So she does.

* * *

Margaret isn't fooled by Varania for a _moment_. She's too self-possessed for a maidservant, too wry for a lady-in-waiting. Margaret eyes her over the tea tray and says, "Can you teach me magic?"

Varania smiles. It's a sly smile, a secretive one, and she says, "No, my lady. But I can teach you how to poison a man."

The templar at the door make a disgusted noise, and Varania ignores her so completely it's as if Knight Corporal Maglene isn't even there. Margaret leans back in her chair, glancing from one of them to the other, and wonders.

"What about Templar magic? Can you teach me that, ser knight?"

Maglene shifts her stance a wee bit, the bucket of that helmet moving ever so slightly to face her. "The Prince has forbidden it, my lady."

Drat. Well, it isn't the first thing Sebastian has forbidden, and Margaret has found ways around his forbidding in the past. "What if I need to, to save my life?"

"You shouldn't need to, my lady." Maglene sounds angry but she holds herself still, a statue in Templar plate. "No mage should dare to come near you."

"Uninvited," Varania adds, picking up her needle. She's embroidering something that looks like it's supposed to be daffodils but really she's no needlewoman and Margaret wonders how they ever meant to hide a Mage bodyguard from her.

She's so _quiet_. Margaret wonders at her poise, at someone so powerful seeming so small and still, and wonders too if that is a skill worth learning.

She leans forward, filling Varania's cup from the pot. "Tell me about poison," she says, and Varania's smile this time is very encouraging.

* * *

"We need to talk." Margaret shuts the door and leans against it, watching her father slouched in a chair by the fire. He makes to stand and she waves him back into his seat, no time for his propriety. "About Isabela."

He sighs, setting aside his ledger. He looks old now, in a way he has never looked old to her. He is only forty, and while the crown must weigh heavily upon him there is no reason for it to _age_ him so. This is the weariness of heartbreak, she is certain of it.

And, she must admit, she is a wee bit heartbroken herself.

"You love her," she says, and she doesn't need the wrench of his features to tell her how truly she has struck him. "She loves you. You should be together. No two people deserve each other so well as you."

When he meets her eye there is something frank in his face, an honesty that is undeniable, something he has not shown to her before. Or perhaps she was never old enough to see it for what it was until now. "I would. I _would_. But she will not, and I cannot."

"Why?" Margaret goes forward, takes a seat before him and braces her hands on her knees. "I wish she were my mother, but more than that I wish you _happy_ , and without her I cannae think you ever will be."

"Och, lass," he sighs, leaning his elbows on his knees and cradling his face in them. "It is hardly so simple. Isabela is a _tempest_. I could never imprison her here with us. She would wither if I did, and she would despise me if I tried."

"Then you should go to _her_ ," Margaret insists. "Why not?"

"Are you so hungry for the throne?" he asks, pressing a chuckle into it as if he's joking, but it's completely wrong, and Margaret is angry with him for it.

"It's not about that. But you've never wanted it and it _chafes_ at you. You dinnae have to stay," she adds, putting into words something she has known in her heart since the first day they met. "Is that not what I'm here for?"

He groans, digging his fingers into his scalp, and when he speaks he sounds ruined by this. "It was. I'm so sorry."

"Then make good on your investment. I willnae hold it against you."

"How could I _leave_ you?" He lifts his head, his eyes catching hers and holding them. How anguished he looks. "If anything happened to you I could never forgive myself."

"Lots of things are going to happen to me," she tells him, because she's thought about it. She really has, lying awake at night and pondering her future. "You cannae prevent it. I have Captain Fenris -- don't you even start," she adds as he opens his mouth. "You know it wasnae Fenris' fault, and I'll not have you disparage my Guard Captain for things he berates himself over worse than you could _ever_ censure him. Then, there's Varania and my very own pet Templar. And do you forget _I_ was the one who stuck a knife in my would-be assassin? Anyway," she goes on, flapping a hand at him far more flippantly than she feels, "we both know who was behind that and Daven's in a _cell_ now, for all you promised to 'rend him limb from limb'. Once you're out of the picture I might have him publicly executed, to set an example."

"When you say things like that," Sebastian says quietly, "I know I can never leave you."

"Rubbish. Daven's a traitor and a _problem_. Goran too. You've been too soft on them, and the people know it. Sebastian the Kind," she says, forcing disdain into her voice that she does not feel. "When they call me Margaret the Bastard I intend for them to mean it _both_ ways."

"Margaret," he says, and then he sighs. "I know you dinnae mean that."

"Good. But, I hope you know that I can be, a _right_ bastard, should I need to."

"I cannae leave you," he tells her. "I swear, I will never--"

It's the last straw. "Don't you _dare_! I won't have you swearing things to me I dinnae want. You meant to make me your heir and I've done my best, but if you'll not believe in me now then you never will. You'll just carry on under _this_ burden the same as always. First Starkhaven, now _me_. Do you know how that feels?" She takes a deep breath, willing her voice to remain steady. "To know that my father suffers because I stand between him and his only happiness?"

His eyes are awful in the firelight. They are her own eyes, wrenched now in misery. "I won't abandon you again," he says, low and too full of feeling for her to bear.

"You never did. You won't now. I know you'd come for me, if I asked you to."

It takes a long time for him to answer, but when he does-- "I will," he says. "I swear it."

"Good." She straightens her spine, holding her chin high. "Now. I want _roses_ at my coronation. White ones." 

He smiles, and it strips some of the years from him, but not enough. "Whatever you want," he says, and she can feel how much he means it.

* * *

The coronation goes off without a hitch. Well, almost, and as hitches go it's fairly minor.

"Emeralds are gaudy," Margaret says. It isn't the gaudiness so much as the weight of them, the whole setting bending her head down until she feels her neck might snap. But to admit as much sounds like admitting to weakness, and she won't do that. "The pearls, please."

"Pearls are _not_ traditional," Yolanda says sharply, her patience just about worn out by now, but Margaret won't bend her head for anyone and certainly not for a dead woman's emeralds.

"I said 'please' out of courtesy." Margaret fixes Yolanda with her sternest look. "Please don't make me say it again."

Yolanda, who does at least know when she's beating a dead horse, takes up the pearls with a very sour look but Margaret doesn't mind. You can't sour pearls with a _look_.

Not these pearls, anyway. They're beautiful luminous things, a gift from a pirate who had once said to her, "A woman needs to pick a theme and stick to it. I like gold. It never tarnishes. But you, magpie, can have anything in the world."

Pearls it is. Not traditional, and definitely not of Starkhaven, but tradition is only so important, and more important is impressing on her subjects that she will _not_ be shaken from her course.

Margaret wears the pearls bound in her hair, coiled about her throat, wound around each wrist. Her dress is silk and Starkhaven red, with cups picked out in obsidian beads, and she feels majestic as she kneels before her father to accept her crown.

Her tiara, actually. She likes it better than the crown, though, that horrid clunky old thing Sebastian detests as much as she does.

Beneath her gown she had made space for her knives, just in case, but she doesn't need them. With Varania on one side and Maglene on the other she is untouchable. And this time, she is the Princess of Starkhaven, so she gets to choose who she dances with, each and every one.

She chooses her father first. He looks uncertain the whole time, but then he stiffens, his eyes widening, and before she turns Margaret knows who's standing behind her.

"Can I cut in?"

Margaret smirks. "On a princess? How rude."

Isabela's smile is as broad and deep as the sea. "Oh, no. Darling, I wanted to cut in on the _Dowager Prince_." She holds out a hand, her eyes merry. "Will you do me the honour?"

Probably it's a scandal. What will happen later undoubtedly will be. Margaret decides that she doesn't care. "I suppose the Queen of the Eastern Seas outranks a princess," she says, taking Isabela's hand. "Even if it is _my_ party."

Isabela leads. Margaret lets her, too glad of her coming to be cross with her for all the times she hadn't come. "You'll take care of him, won't you?" she asks, because he _is_ her father, and she _does_ love him.

"With every breath in my body," Isabela promises. "But you have to take care of yourself now, darling. Can you do that for me?"

"I'll _try_." She leans in to whisper, "Did you know I _stabbed_ a man?"

"I heard! I was very impressed."

Margaret beams, though she feels her heart bending, not quite broken. They'll be happy, she thinks. And she can be happy, knowing that. She can be anything she wants now. "Thank-you," she says, "for everything." _You're not my mother, but you always will be._

"Be brave, magpie," Isabela tells her. She kisses Margaret's mouth, her hair full of sea-salt and myrrh, and peels away to wrap herself around Sebastian's shoulder. He catches her against him, and for a moment Margaret thinks he might kiss her there in front of everyone, but instead he looks up, at _Margaret_ , with those familiar, aquamarine eyes. _Thank-you,_ they say, and, _Goodbye_ , and maybe, maybe, _I love you._

Margaret does _not_ cry at her own _damn_ ball. Instead, she turns to look over the crowd, seeking out the one person who might make a bigger distraction right now than the pirate who danced with a crowned Princess.

There. He's standing awkwardly alone, out of place, a bastard in the ballroom of a palace surrounded by people who don't acknowledge him at all. His own _father_ , who Margaret has _plans_ for. (Odious man. He'd _leered_ at her when he'd knelt to give fealty. How _dare_ he.)

"Hullo, Ser Rory," she says, offering her hand because this is _her_ palace and _her_ ball, and she has every right. "Will you not dance with me?"

He looks like he's swallowed his tongue for all of a moment, but when he smiles it makes her heart flutter. She might not marry him in the end, but she has plans for him, too. So many wicked plans. _Thank-you, Isabela._

"Of course, my lady. That is," he stutters, "your Highness."

They dance. It's a scandal. Worse is the scandal in the morning when the news breaks that the former prince has run off to sea with a pirate.

* * *

Princess Margaret holds court in her armour, much to the dismay of several of her elderly cousins. She holds court in her pearls too, much to the dismay of the others.

She never does execute anyone, or marry, though she _does_ get herself an heir who looks enough like his father that no-one really asks too many questions. She feeds the poor and ministers to the sick and has the Chantry orphanage moved into the East wing of the palace, where she can keep an eye on the sisters. Rather famously, she rides into battle against Darkspawn, and her Guard Captain nearly tears her head off for it but someone does write a song about her. Ser Rory is made Knight Captain, and eventually Knight Commander. It's all very political.

There are rumours that she consorts with pirates, but Starkhaven is landlocked, so how could that be?

The people call her Margaret the Merciful in the end, and she doesn't mind that one bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA: DID I MESS UP VELANNA AND VARANIA AT 2 IN THE MORNING WELL YES I DID. Fixed now. >_>
> 
> This is a continuity in which Connor Guerrin was never sent to the Tower, which probably means he's got a demon lurking in his head :/ 
> 
> I never meant this chapter to be so long or so ... this. It was just going to be Sebastian picking up an heir he'd never known existed, a relic of his rakish youth, and training her up to take over so he could run away to sea with his ladylove. But as soon as I started writing Margaret I realised I couldn't use her like that, and neither, once he'd come to love her, could Sebastian.
> 
> Imagine, if you will, that somewhere in there Sebastian and Isabela had a tremendous argument about it -- not because Isabela wanted him to abandon Margaret but because she *didn't want him to*, and removed herself as a temptation for him. Thus, his sadness, and her absence, and all of that. Isabela is no-one's mother, but she did love Margaret, much as she did love Merrill. 
> 
> I also never planned for Margaret to be such a little firecracker. She did that all herself.


End file.
